Rick Raphael 27 min read

Private Jediah Cromwell, fresh from the near-inaccessible West Virginia hills, is homesick for the first time since induction, and back home, Ma feels trouble coming a mile across the gorge.

Rick Raphael's 1963 story is a warm, folksy psi-powers and social-SF tale of a hillbilly with hidden gifts. Charming, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a backwoods Army recruit and his uncanny mountain family turn out to have talents the modern world can't quite handle.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

27 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr